Cons
Very difficult installation on malware-infested systems. Processes and services could be killed by malicious code. Parental control ineffective.

Bottom Line

Antivirus is the best part of F-Secure Internet Security 2014, especially if you can install it on a clean system. The quality of the other suite components varies quite a bit.

By Neil J. RubenkingSafe Profile for Facebook We all know someone who seems to be on Facebook every minute of the day. You post something, they "like" it three seconds later. Or perhaps you are that person, to your friends. When that much of your life takes place in social media, it's really important to configure privacy settings correctly.

Log into your Facebook account through F-Secure's Safe Profile and you can get a report on all areas of your profile. It's a bit like Trend Micro's Privacy Scanner, though Trend Micro also checks Twitter and Google+.

I tried to run a scan on my virtual machine test system, but it reported that it's not compatible with Internet Explorer 8. Since those using Windows XP can't upgrade past IE8, XP users are out of luck. I switched to a Windows 7 system to continue.

The report showed nothing amiss, but that's perhaps to be expected, since I had tuned up with Trend Micro's scanner just last week. I logged into my account, threw several setting wide open to public view, and tried again. Ooops! You must wait ten minutes between scans.

When I did manage a re-scan, it still gave my profile a clean bill of health. I'm not entirely convinced this feature is doing what it ought to.

Very Minor Performance Impact F-Secure doesn't load this suite down with bonus features, it doesn't have a full-scale firewall, and its core antivirus is compact. My real-world performance tests showed that it has an unusually low impact on system performance. Do note that these days even a relatively high impact isn't huge.

Getting security components loaded at system startup can slow boot time, so I measured boot time with no suite and with F-Secure installed. The difference was negligible; F-Secure slowed the boot time by just 5 percent. The average for current suites is a 23 percent slowdown, so F-Secure looks good.

It also had a very small effect on the time required to run my file move/copy and zip/unzip tests. The script that moves and copies big files across drives ran just 2 percent slower under F-Secure, and the one that zips and unzips that same file collection ran just 7 percent slower. The current suite averages for those tests are 20 percent and 16 percent respectively, so F-Secure looks quite good. You'd be hard-pressed to notice a difference between this and Webroot's even-smaller impact.

Antivirus the Best Part If you can install F-Secure on a clean system, bypassing the possibility of malware interfering with installation, its antivirus protection is great. The independent labs give it good marks, and it topped all recent programs in my hands-on tests. The suite's Online Safety component enhances that protection by blocking access to malicious and fraudulent sites.

Spam filtering is certainly simple, with almost no configuration, but it let more spam through than the best products. Don't rely on this suite for parental control, though; it doesn't work. And I'm not entirely sure what to think of the banking protection and Safe Profile features.

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Automatic Renewal Program: Your subscription will continue without interruption for as long as you wish, unless
you instruct us otherwise. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of the term unless you authorize
cancellation. Each year, you'll receive a notice and you authorize that your credit/debit card will be charged the
annual subscription rate(s). You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund on all
unsent issues. If your credit/debit card or other billing method can not be charged, we will bill you directly instead. Contact Customer Service